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At first glance the build up strikes me as highly rationalistic, that is, the errors are to be found by finding misintegrations to reality. His general methodology is somewhat indicative of this, although I haven't dug through it. That is, he integrates with reality at the beginning of a discussion, then focuses on a more abstract "derivation" (If B, then A, and C follows from both A and B, etc... - without integrating each to reality).

He attempts to make that case that his disagreements are small ones, and then proceeds to reject at its core a bunch of the key tenets of objectivism. Mostly by reinserting all of the dichotomies that Objectivism rejects.

I vaguely remember the name Heumer from my dealings onling a decade ago, but can't place the particular person.

Which issue do you want to discuss, and why do you think his argument warrants your time?

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Veritas, Do you find any of his objections convincing or confusing? If so, which ones?

As Groovenstein noted, there's a lot being said on that page. After a brief scan, I suspect that the essence of his disagreement is stated in this quote:

One way to answer this might be to say that this is just the meaning of "good", i.e. "good" just means "promotes (my) life."

If you take the Objectivist theory of meaning, however, which rejects the analytic/synthetic distinction and identifies meaning with reference, then this sort of answer cannot be legitimate. It cannot ever be legitimate to answer "How do you know that A is B?" by saying that this is implicit in the meaning of "A". For on the Objectivist theory of meaning, everything that is true of A is implied in the meaning of "A", and everything that is not true of A contradicts the meaning of "A". Therefore, if something's being implied in the meaning of our words was a sufficient explanation for how we knew it, we would be omniscient. That is, if we know every fact that is implied in the meanings of our words (every fact the denial of which is contradictory), then, if the Objectivist theory of meaning is also correct, we know every fact. Since this is not the case, the Objectivist has to say that even the things that are implied in the meanings of our words need to be proven - specifically, they require observational evidence. For example, when asked how we know that gravitational attraction is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the bodies, it is not correct to say we know this because the denial of it is contradictory. The denial of it is contradictory, on the Objectivist theory, but that does not explain how we know it. To explain how we know it, one would have to detail certain scientific experiments and observations of the solar system. For the Objectivist scientist, to defend a theory by saying the denial of it is contradictory, is just begging the question. We don't know whether it is contradictory until we first find out whether it is true.

Thus, it can not be an adequate answer to my question, "How do you know that what promotes life is good?" to say that the denial of this proposition is contradictory or that it is implied in the meaning of "good", if the Objectivist theory of meaning is correct.

...but, you may be curious about some other aspect?

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This area specifically is very confusing to me.

5.1. THE VALUE OF LIFE

I said earlier that what is wrong with Rand's attempted derivation of ethics is that it requires the evaluative presupposition that life is good, which has not been and cannot be inferred purely from observations. Some Objectivists say that life actually isn't good, but everything which promotes life is good. I think this (i.e. the first part of that claim) is obviously false, besides being a distortion of Rand's views, but not to press that - this view has the same problem as all attempts to bridge the is/ought gap, i.e., it just raises the question, how do we know that what promotes life is good?

One way to answer this might be to say that this is just the meaning of "good", i.e. "good" just means "promotes (my) life."

If you take the Objectivist theory of meaning, however, which rejects the analytic/synthetic distinction and identifies meaning with reference, then this sort of answer cannot be legitimate. It cannot ever be legitimate to answer "How do you know that A is B?" by saying that this is implicit in the meaning of "A". For on the Objectivist theory of meaning, everything that is true of A is implied in the meaning of "A", and everything that is not true of A contradicts the meaning of "A". Therefore, if something's being implied in the meaning of our words was a sufficient explanation for how we knew it, we would be omniscient. That is, if we know every fact that is implied in the meanings of our words (every fact the denial of which is contradictory), then, if the Objectivist theory of meaning is also correct, we know every fact. Since this is not the case, the Objectivist has to say that even the things that are implied in the meanings of our words need to be proven - specifically, they require observational evidence. For example, when asked how we know that gravitational attraction is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the bodies, it is not correct to say we know this because the denial of it is contradictory. The denial of it is contradictory, on the Objectivist theory, but that does not explain how we know it. To explain how we know it, one would have to detail certain scientific experiments and observations of the solar system. For the Objectivist scientist, to defend a theory by saying the denial of it is contradictory, is just begging the question. We don't know whether it is contradictory until we first find out whether it is true.

Thus, it can not be an adequate answer to my question, "How do you know that what promotes life is good?" to say that the denial of this proposition is contradictory or that it is implied in the meaning of "good", if the Objectivist theory of meaning is correct. For such a reply would simply beg the question - the denial of the proposition in question is a contradiction, on the Objectivist view, if and only if it is true that what promotes life is good. We still need an explanation of how we know it is true - i.e., what observations lead to this conclusion, and exactly what is the form of the inference by which they lead there. In other words, even if "good" means "promotes life", on the Objectivist epistemology and philosophy of language, you still have to prove that this is what "good" means, by empirical (sensory) evidence. I have never seen such a proof.

On the other hand, suppose we take up my theory of meaning, in which there is an analytic/synthetic distinction, and only a small subset of all true propositions are analytic (i.e., such that their truth is implied in the meanings of the words involved and such that their denial is contradictory). In that case, it does not beg the question to say that we know what serves life is good because this is the meaning of good, because what the word means can be known immediately, by reflection (without this leading to omniscience) - at least, you can know what you mean by a word by reflection, although you need empirical evidence to determine whether others mean the same thing. However, the reply now faces a different problem: The claim that "good" means "promotes life" is now simply false, and it is refuted by Moore's 'Open Question Argument'. That is, given that we make a distinction between the analytic and the synthetic, we can repeat the "Jocasta/Oedipus" argument to show that "promotes life" does not mean the same as "good". Consider a person who decides to commit suicide. This person believes (let us suppose) that

(G) Ending his life is good.

But he does not believe that

(P) Ending his life promotes his life.

since he knows that ending his life will destroy his life. It is evident, then, that "good" can not mean the same as "promotes life," for the same reason that "Jocasta" can not mean the same as "Oedipus' mother." (It means something more like "worthy of being chosen" - though I would not claim this is a completely accurate definition either.) It is possible for a person to not know that what promotes life is good, just as Oedipus did not know that Jocasta was his mother. Therefore, some explanation is required of how we find out that what promotes our life is good.

Note that when I say "an explanation of how we know this" is required, I am not expressing doubt about it. I mean simply what I say: given that we know it, how do we know it? Do we know it based on observation, or do we know it a priori? If we do know it, but no observations can be found sufficient to justify it, then we must conclude it is a priori. That is the point of the present discussion.

In more general terms, you can see that this sort of appeal to the meaning of "good" can not be valid, since if it were, it would be a way of 'validating' any claim whatsoever. Any person could take whatever ethical views he has, and claim that they are true in virtue of the meaning of good. I might propose to define "good" to mean "promotes the production of chocolate ice cream," and thence deduce that every person ought to produce as much chocolate ice cream as he can. This is silly, of course. I can't simply claim that this is what "good" means. It is not what "good" means, and if I want to claim that producing chocolate ice cream is good, I need to give a substantive reason for thinking so. And the same holds no matter what is substituted for "chocolate ice cream." Claiming that "good" means "promotes x" is not a way of showing that it is good to promote x.

Similarly, one could use the strategy to validate any descriptive claim. Suppose I want to show that the sky is red. I say, "Well, 'red' means the color of the sky during the daytime." That is not what "red" means, and that does not give a reason for thinking the sky is red. Nor does the parallel validation work if you substitute "blue" for "red". If asked how I know the sky is blue, I also can not merely say, "'Blue' means the color of the sky during the daytime." That isn't the meaning of "blue" either, and it is not a reason for thinking the sky is blue. The only reason for thinking the sky is blue consists in going outside and looking up. You don't define the sky to be blue. You observe its color.

About my proof that everyone should produce chocolate ice cream: an Objectivist might say that the difference there is that he (the Objectivist) has given a correct definition, because it really is good to promote life, whereas the proposed ice-cream definition is not correct. But this just begs the question - how do you know that your definition is correct, and not the chocolate-ice-cream definition? Of course, anyone with any ethical views whatever is going to claim that his views are correct, and therefore, if the Objectivist strategy is permissible, may propose a 'definition' of good that makes his theory of ethics necessarily true, and may respond to all objections in exactly the same manner the Objectivist can.

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I vaguely remember the name Heumer from my dealings onling a decade ago, but can't place the particular person.
He's a professor of philosophy at UColorado, and used to post on HPO under the name Owl. He's not an idiot, but he is a standard academician philosopher who is unwilling or unable to shuck the baggage of his profession. Interestingly, his rant starts with meaning, so let's quote part of it:
When Objectivists say that "the meaning of a concept is all of the concretes it subsumes, past, present, and future, including ones that we will never know about," they are failing to distinguish sense and reference. The need for distinguishing the 'sense' of a word from its 'reference' is shown by examples like this: Oedipus, famously, wanted to marry Jocaste, and as he did so, he both believed and knew that he was marrying Jocaste. The following sentence, in other words, describes what Oedipus both wanted and believed to be the case:

(J) Oedipus marries Jocaste.

However, Oedipus certainly did not want to marry his mother, and as he did so, he neither knew nor believed that he was marrying his mother. The following sentence, then, describes what Oedipus did not want or believe to be the case:

(M) Oedipus marries Oedipus' mother.

But yet Jocaste just was Oedipus' mother. That is, the word "Jocaste" and the phrase "Oedipus' mother" both refer to the same person. Therefore, if the meaning of a word is simply what it refers to, then "Jocaste" and "Oedipus' mother" mean the same thing. And if that is the case, then (J) and (M) mean the same thing. But then how could it be that Oedipus could believe what (J) asserts without believing what (M) asserts, if they assert the same thing?

I emboldened certain words which may help those with a knowledge of Objectivist epistemology to understand his error. Neither "Jocaste" nor "Oedipus' mother" are concepts. A concept is a mental integration of two or more units, measurement omitted, unified under a "symbol", namely a word. Jocaste is a single unit; "Oedipus' mother" is a phrase, and also does not refer to a unification of two or more units. This Jocaste canard is standard in philosophy of language, and it always depends on equivocating on what a concept is. I think for Huemer, and for many language philosophers, a "concept" is simply "something in the mind".

He also misunderstands and misrepresents the Objectivist position on science (although in fairness his rant was written before Peikoff's lectures on induction became available, and AFAIK he only deals with printed versions of Objectivism). He does not appear to understand the notion of axiomatic knowledge, which is odd given his dissertation.

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Has anyone read and responded to the claims on this sight. Or does anyone know of any books that respond to modern critiques of Objectivism?

http://home.sprynet.com/~owl1/rand.htm

I didn't bother to read beyond Michael Huemer's first section on "Meaning," because right from the start I noticed a major problem. He challenges Ayn Rand's view of concepts and goes on to distinguish what he calls the "reference" and the "sense" of a word, which he claims Ayn Rand failed to do. To argue his point he analyzes the "reference" and "sense" of two different words: "Jocaste" (Oedipus' wife/mother) and the "Empire State Building." But Huemer should know, if he took Grammar 101, that these are two proper names--the only types of words that do not denote concepts, because they do not refer to two or more units.

A concept is a mental integration of two or more units which are isolated according to a specific characteristic(s) and united by a specific definition ...

Every word we use (with the exception of proper names) is a symbol that denotes a concept, i.e., that stands for an unlimited number of concretes of a certain kind.

So Huemer attempts to criticize Rand's understanding of concepts by appealing to his examination of two words which Rand argued were not concepts. It's not clear to me that Huemer read up to page 10 in ITOE. So I see no reason to read the rest of his silly essay.

Edit: Looks like David and I had the same idea at roughly the same time.

Edited by MisterSwig
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I said earlier that what is wrong with Rand's attempted derivation of ethics is that it requires the evaluative presupposition that life is good, which has not been and cannot be inferred purely from observations.
Tara Smith's books serve as a nice corrective of this assumption. I think there is no denying that Rand was economical in her expressions, so she did not elaborate greatly on the relationship of "choice" and "value" in Galt's speech. Objectivism starts with a metaphysical fact, that man must choose between existence and non-existence. Smith does a good job of showing how that choice is above reason, that the notion "good" by itself means nothing -- it has to be good for something (what? Life, of course), and that ethics follows from the fact of having make that particular fundamental choice.

I think his argument based on the meaning of "good" is just silly and he should know better. Objectivism does not claim that the concept "good" means "promotes life". "Good" might be defined as "promotes an end" -- I think his problem here is that he doesn't understand the difference between a definition deductively entailing certain propositions, and the "implies" relationship between a concept and the concretes that it subsumes. Objectivism vehemently denies that concepts and definitions are interchangeable.

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The Jocaste nonsense bugs me enough that I have to continue my rant, because I think that Huemer's misunderstanding of epistemology, especially meaning, is profound. Let's focus on a smaller part.

The following sentence, in other words, describes what Oedipus both wanted and believed to be the case:

(J) Oedipus marries Jocaste.

Well, no, Oedipus married, past tense, Jocaste. At some point in his single life, Oedipus wanted to marry Jocaste. At no time did Oedipus believe "Oedipus marries Jocaste"; at some point he wished "I want to marry Jocaste", he wished that he would or could marry Jocaste, and perhaps believed that he would marry Jocaste or simply he believed "I will marry Jocaste". Afterwards, he wanted something else but it wasn't marrying Jocaste; he then did believe "I married Jocaste", or, he believed that he married Jocaste. (And it was a correct belief).

Huemer's understanding of the nature of the verb "want" is linguistically deficient. Consider the noun phrase "A Swede" which is vague (it describes 'some person who is Swedish' leaving unspecified the concrete referent) but it isn't ambiguous. Embedded under the verb "want, it becomes ambiguous, as in "She wants to marry a Swede", which can mean that there is an individual who she wants to marry, who happens to be Swedish; or, because she has a thing for Swedish guys, an essential marital criterion for her is that the husband be Swedish.

Huemer seems to be unaware of the complexities of language and thought, and he seems to think of meaning as being "symbolic replaceability". This is a serious error, as you can see by the fact that "my mother" taken out of context (where the referent of "my" is unbound) refers to every women who has ever been a mother. When I say "my mother", that refers to the same person as "Alice Odden", but when Kendall or Matt say (individually) "my mother", that never refers to "Alice Odden". Oedipus never think anything of the form "Oedipus' mother / foot / sword", rather he thinks "my mother / foot / sword". His loose treatment of semantics is what gets him and all of the other sense / reference afficionados into trouble.

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He's a professor of philosophy at UColorado, and used to post on HPO under the name Owl. He's not an idiot, but he is a standard academician philosopher who is unwilling or unable to shuck the baggage of his profession.

Ah, this makes a lot of sense, and I remember OWL on HPO. He wants all the dichotomies back in. Gotcha.

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Of course, Oedipus did not know that Jocaste was his mother, which explains why he was not illogical in believing (J) without believing (M). But that doesn't answer the question above, and in fact it just creates another problem. If "Jocaste" means the same thing as "Oedipus' mother," then "Jocaste is Oedipus' mother" must mean the same thing as "Jocaste is Jocaste." How could Oedipus fail to know that Jocaste was his mother, when he certainly was not ignorant that Jocaste was Jocaste, if those mean the same thing?

I think he attacks a strawman here, namely Naive Realism. According to him, Rand thought that by simply encountering an object, man passively aquires full knowledge of it, which she didn't, of course.

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I think he attacks a strawman here, namely Naive Realism. According to him, Rand thought that by simply encountering an object, man passively aquires full knowledge of it, which she didn't, of course.

That makes sense. I'm kind of wondering how he comes to this conclusion, especially after the example he gives. Why didn't Oedipus know Jocaste was his mother? Maybe because he never asked? You can't act on knowledge and information you dont have. In order to get the information you have to, see it or hear it. Sense he did neither then he didn't know of it, to the best of the knowledge he acquired from his senses.

It seems the guy who wrote this critique thinks you learn through osmosis or something.

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  • 4 weeks later...
Huemer seems to be unaware of the complexities of language and thought, and he seems to think of meaning as being "symbolic replaceability". This is a serious error, as you can see by the fact that "my mother" taken out of context (where the referent of "my" is unbound) refers to every women who has ever been a mother. When I say "my mother", that refers to the same person as "Alice Odden", but when Kendall or Matt say (individually) "my mother", that never refers to "Alice Odden". Oedipus never think anything of the form "Oedipus' mother / foot / sword", rather he thinks "my mother / foot / sword". His loose treatment of semantics is what gets him and all of the other sense / reference afficionados into trouble.

But words and phrase do have both sense and reference and they are not inherently identical. The reference of a word does not necessarily convey its sense. The sense of a word/phrase does not necessarily convey its reference. The favorite example is "the Morning Star", "the Evening Star" and "the Planet Venus". It turns out all of these phrases have identical reference but mean quite different things.

Also substitutability is very context sensitive. Quine gives the example: "bachelor buttons" (a kind of flower). One cannot meaningfully substitute and get "unmarried human male of marriageable age buttons" So it is the failure to sort out sense, reference and context that leads to problems.

Bob Kolker

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The favorite example is "the Morning Star", "the Evening Star" and "the Planet Venus". It turns out all of these phrases have identical reference but mean quite different things.

Those words refer to the single object, but have different connotations. IMO, the key word here is single: these words do not represent any concept, but rather singular existent, and Rand said that concept's meaning is its reference. To expand on connotations, "the Evening Star" and "the Morning Star" both suggest that Venus falls into category of stars (in which they differ from the name "the Planet Venus"), but differ in relation to man that they suggest, namely the time of the day when Venus can be observed.

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Has anyone read and responded to the claims on this sight. Or does anyone know of any books that respond to modern critiques of Objectivism?

Actually, all of Objectivism is a refutation of modern philosophy of the linguistic analysis type or of the nihilistic type. I suppose if you have trouble spotting some diatribe against Objectivism or Miss Rand, then you need to study Objectivism a little more. After a while, you won't have to go looking for such refutations of refutations of Objectivism, because you will have the capacity to do that yourself.

In a nutshell, however, a concept does refer to everything about that which is being conceptualized, but this does not imply automatic omniscience. A concept is like a file folder, and as one discovers more about a particular referent (or that group of referents) then that knowledge is filed under that concept. In some cases, this even works for proper nouns -- i.e Oedipus' mother / wife and Venus / morning star / evening star. In these two examples, each phrase has one and only one referent, but a given person may not be aware that Oedipus' mother is his wife or that Venus (the planet) is the morning star or the evening star. The referent is still the same, however, and eventually, for a rational man, his knowledge will be integrated such that he understands this.

You might want to read Dr. Peikoff's essay "The Analytic / Synthetic Dichotomy;" a dichotomy that doesn't exist in Objectivism.

Regarding life as the standard for judging what is good and what is not good, it is an observationally based integration based on the fact that man is a living being; and like all living beings some things promote life and others don't. If someone wants to come up with another standard, they are free to do so, and many have arisen; but these were, in fact, not beneficial to life, which is why Objectivism rejects them.

As far as suicide goes, if a man has lost so many values (or thinks he has lost some substantial values) that make his life worth living, why should he carry on with a life that is full of nothing but misery? Life as the standard does not mean stay alive as long as you biologically can, it means one ought to fulfill one's life with plenty of values to sustain that life (both physically and psychologically). So, even though it may sound like a contradiction for a rational man to want to commit suicide, that is he concludes that by man's life as the standard he would be better off dead, this is a rational conclusion if he sees no way out of a circumstance that will led to nothing but misery for the rest of his life.

However, life is invaluable -- you only have one, and careful thought should be given to whether or not one is going to continue living. Acting strictly out of an emotional crisis would not be rational, just as acting on emotions is not rational in any circumstance. One has to think it through and decide if it is possible to correct his situation. Did he lose actual values, or is he projecting? If someone else drove him into that decision --say by murdering his wife and kids, or nearly driving him insane with psychological manipulations -- is it possible to enact justice against those who wronged him? Are there other values he can pursue, such as falling in love again (at least as a potential)? Is his situation really so helpless that he can't possibly do anything about it? Is he really taking everything into consideration?

These decisions are all very personal, and it is his life; and there is no duty to live.

I think it is only someone who divorces thought from living, or divorces the good from living, who can say that suicide is a contradiction without context. The context for making all decisions should be the nature of life -- especially the nature of man's life -- and that each and every day a man must decide to continue to live if he is going to continue to live, provided he can continue to live and not merely exist.

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  • 2 years later...

I'm new and I was just curious if anyone had gotten to section '5: More on Ethics,' specifically 5.3.2. I don't have much of a question except to ask if he is serious. I mean, really? I'm pretty new to Objectivism and I haven't read enough to refute many of his previous statements in the argument. I don't know the Objectivist standpoint on what he's criticizing, and it's obvious that he may not know it himself if he so glaringly misinterpreted the idea of rational egoism, so I can't really make a judgement. Just because he says that's the Objectivist belief doesn't mean it is. However, back to the point, which is, again, really?

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I'm new and I was just curious if anyone had gotten to section '5: More on Ethics,' specifically 5.3.2. I don't have much of a question except to ask if he is serious. I mean, really? I'm pretty new to Objectivism and I haven't read enough to refute many of his previous statements in the argument. I don't know the Objectivist standpoint on what he's criticizing, and it's obvious that he may not know it himself if he so glaringly misinterpreted the idea of rational egoism, so I can't really make a judgement. Just because he says that's the Objectivist belief doesn't mean it is. However, back to the point, which is, again, really?

In that example of his writing(the only that I've read) I am unimpressed. "Suppose reality is totally different than it is, now apply objectivism."

Ok...

Why I'm not a Paleo-dietor

Me- "What is the healthiest sort of diet for humans to eat?"

Paleo-Dietor- "One with a proper mix of protein, fats, and vegetables, and moderate amounts of fruits and dairy."

Me- "What if there were no such thing as meat, vegetables, fruits or dairy?"

Paleo-Dietor- "I dont know...pasta, I guess"

Me- "What if the only food left was candy?"

Paleo-Dietor- "I suppose I'd go with snickers bars...at least it has nuts."

Me- "Aha...you advocate a diet consisting only of snickers bars! I intuitively know this is wrong. It's ridiculous, in fact, since everyone obviously knows that no one can survive only on snickers bars and this, ladies and gentlemen, is where the paleo-diet brings us...to a world where we all die of scurvy and malnutrition. I don't know about you, but I'll stick with my diet of pasta, potatoes, and high fructose corn syrup rather than switch to something this likely to cause death!"

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